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Touro Law to Commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day

Touro Law is pleased to announce that in honor of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Evelyn Pike Rubin will deliver a lecture on Wednesday, April 30 at 12:30 pm. She will discuss the story of survival of more than 18,000 refugees escaping Nazi terror in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II. Following the lecture, the “Sanctuary in Shanghai: Rescue During the Holocaust” exhibit will open at Touro Law. Both the lecture and the exhibit are open to the public at no charge.

Dean Patricia Salkin stated, “Touro Law has committed to focus sharing the story of the importance of Shanghai during WWII and the survival of the thousands of Jews who escaped Nazi occupation through Shanghai. This is an important part of history that is not well known. I am grateful to Evelyn Pike Rubin for joining us to share her story and we are proud to have the Sanctuary in Shanghai exhibit on display.”

Evelyn Pike Rubin, Jewish activist, author and lecturer, was born in Breslau, Germany, where her ancestors had lived for many generations. Evelyn’s parents were raised as strict orthodox Jews, a tradition they passed on to their child at a young age. Evelyn, who was born just before Hitler came into power, only remembers Germany as one led by the Nazis. On November 9 and 10, 1938, during Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) synagogues were burned all over Germany. Jewish shops were shattered, and thousands of Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Evelyn’s father hid in his Christian landlord’s attic, but was later arrested while trying to fetch Evelyn from a friend’s home. He was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp for three weeks. In 1939, at the age of eight, her family fled Germany to the only refuge available to them—Shanghai, China. She attended the Shanghai Jewish School, a British-run Jewish school. At the end of the war in 1947, Evelyn emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in New York and Long Island.

The unique “Sanctuary in Shanghai: Rescue During the Holocaust” exhibit from Shanghai features a variety of perspectives on the Holocaust through eyewitness accounts and scholarly research. From 1933 to 1941, Shanghai accepted more than 18,000 Jews fleeing the Holocaust in Europe. Jewish refugees lived harmoniously with local citizens, and by the end of World War II, most of the Jews living in Shanghai had survived. On loan from the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum, the exhibit includes the history of the rescued Jews of the Shanghai community, Jewish cultural life, video and eyewitness testimony, and artifacts.

The exhibition will be located at Touro Law Center’s 2nd floor Atrium. It is open to the public daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This lecture is a pre-event for a Touro Law Center conference scheduled for June 2015 on the “Jews of Shanghai,” to be held in Shanghai and sponsored by Touro Law Center, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics (SUIBE), and the Center of Jewish Studies Shanghai.

The conference will examine the role of the law and the legal system in understanding the history of the Jews in Shanghai. The conference will bring together law professors, historians, and journalists to investigate the histories of the Jews in Shanghai. In addition to the fact that Shanghai provided as a refuge for Jews leaving Europe during Hitler’s reign of terror, there are other chapters in the story of the Jews of Shanghai. Sephardic Jews came to Shanghai in the 19th century, and some prospered there. Jews left Russia in the 1920s for Northern China and came to Shanghai during the 1930s.

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Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center’s 185,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility is located adjacent to both a state and a federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York. Touro Law’s proximity to the courthouses, coupled with programming developed to integrate the courtroom into the classroom, provide a one-of-a kind learning model for law students, combining a rigorous curriculum taught by expert faculty with a practical courtroom experience. Touro Law, which has a student body of approximately 750 and an alumni base of more than 5,000, offers full- and part-time J.D. programs, several dual degree programs and graduate law programs for US and foreign law graduates. Touro Law Center is part of the Touro College system.

About the Touro College and University SystemTouro is a system of non-profit institutions of higher and professional education. Touro College was chartered in 1970 primarily to enrich the Jewish heritage, and to serve the larger American and global community. Approximately 19,000 students are currently enrolled in its various schools and divisions. Touro College has branch campuses, locations and instructional sites in the New York area, as well as branch campuses and programs in Berlin, Jerusalem, Moscow, Paris and Florida. New York Medical College, Touro University California and its Nevada branch campus, as well as Touro University Worldwide and its Touro College Los Angeles division are separately accredited institutions within the Touro College and University System. For further information on Touro College, please go to: http://www.touro.edu/media/.

For more info contact:
Patti DesrochersDirector of Communicationspattid@tourolaw.edu(631) 761-7062